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iTunes needs music to perform for you. Insert any commercial music CD. The music tracks appear in the iTunes song list, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The tracks of an audio CD.
If your Mac is connected to the Internet, iTunes presents the track information from the Internet for each song automatically after you insert the CD, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: CD track info appears after iTunes consults with the Internet.
When you play a CD in iTunes, it's just like using a CD player. To play a track on the CD, click the track name, and then click the Play button. The Play button turns into a Pause button and the song plays.
When the song finishes, iTunes continues playing the songs in the list in sequence until you click the Pause button (which turns back into the Play button). You can skip to the next or previous song using the arrow keys on your keyboard, or by clicking the Forward or Back button next to the Play button.
 | The status window above the list of songs tells you the name of the artist and song (if known), and the elapsed time. If you click the Elapsed Time status, the status changes to the remaining time and then, with another click, to the total time (one more click brings you back to the elapsed time). |
Eject a CD by clicking the Eject button or by choosing Controls --> Eject Disc.
Rearranging and repeating tracks
You can rearrange the order of the tracks to automatically play them in any sequence you want — similar to programming a CD player. Click the upward-pointing arrow at the top of the first column in the song list, and it changes to a downward-pointing arrow, with the tracks in reverse order.
You can change the order of tracks played in sequence. Just click and hold the mouse button on the track number in the first column for the song, and drag it up or down in the list. You can set up the tracks to play in some completely different sequence.
Skipping tracks
To skip tracks so they don't play in sequence, click the box next to the song name to remove the check mark. Unselected songs are skipped when you play the entire sequence.
| To remove a series of check marks simultaneously, hold down the Command key while selecting songs to skip. |
Repeating a song list
You can repeat an entire song list by clicking the Repeat button at the bottom of the Source list on the left side of the iTunes window (or by choosing Controls --> Repeat All). Click the Repeat button again to repeat the current song (or choose Controls --> Repeat One). Click it once more to return to normal playback (or choose Controls --> Repeat Off).
| The Shuffle button, to the left of the Repeat button, plays the songs in the list in a random order, which can be fun. You can then press the arrow keys on your keyboard or click the Back and Forward buttons to jump around in random order. |
Displaying visuals
The visual effects in iTunes can turn your Mac display into a light show synchronized to the music of your iPod. You can watch a cool visual display of eye candy while the music plays — or leave it on like a Sixties-style lava lamp.
Click the Visual Effects button on the bottom right side of the iTunes window to turn display visual effects. The visual animation appears in the iTunes window and synchronizes with the music.
In addition to the animation replacing the iTunes song list, an Options button replaces the Import button in the upper-right corner of the iTunes window. You can click the Options button to open the Visualizer Options dialog box, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Set options for visual effects.
The Visualizer Options dialog box offers the following options that affect the animation but not the performance of iTunes playing music:
- Display Frame Rate: Displays the frame rate of the animation along with the animation.
- Cap Frame Rate at 30 fps: Keeps the frame rate at 30 fps or lower, which is the speed of normal video.
- Always Display Song Info: Displays the song name, artist, and album for the song currently playing, along with the animation.
- Faster but Rougher Display: The animation plays faster, with rougher graphics. Choose this option if your animation plays too slowly.
The Visualizer menu in iTunes gives you even more control over visual effects. You can choose Visualize --> Small or Visualize --> Medium to display the visual effects in a rectangle inside the iTunes window, or Visualize --> Large to fill the iTunes window. Choosing Visualize --> Full Screen sets the visual effects to take over the entire screen. When displaying the full-screen visual effects, you can click the mouse or press the Escape key on your keyboard to stop the display and return to iTunes. Visualize --> Turn Visualizer On is the same as the Visual Effects button: It displays the visual effects.
While the animated visual effects play, press Shift+slash (as in typing a question mark) to see a list of keyboard functions. Depending on the visual effect, you may see more choices of keyboard functions by pressing Shift+slash again.
To turn off the visual effects display, click the Visual Effects button again. You can leave the effects on (except when in full-screen mode) even while opening the equalizer, because you still have access to the playback controls.
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